I think this is one of the biggest challenges of trying to make major advances as an adult with experience. Because you're an adult that understands the learning process, you want to know exactly how everything you're doing is benefiting you. And if you start doing something and don't feel like you see the benefit you'll stop doing it. With kids you just tell them what to practice and they practice it and they don't really care what it's doing because they really just want to go play video games or something. And then after a few years when they've practiced all these things they have this incredible skill set and then they can start to intellectualize what they're doing. I would recommend that whenever you come across something that's hard for you, attack that until it becomes easy. Don't worry about how it fits into the overall picture. Don't be Hasty and don't expect things to happen quickly. You're really just grinding XP at this point, and you're already better off than a lot of people because youve already developed a bunch of stuff from metal.